Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in the number of telephone lines and telephone “devices” (e.g., mobile phones, IP telephony software) belonging to or used by each individual. This increase is due to a variety of factors but the result has been that many individuals are nearly overwhelmed by the effort required to manage the incoming and outgoing calls on these multiple telephone lines.
In an effort to assist individuals in this management task, the number and variety of enhanced telephone services offered to ordinary customers, such as call forwarding, repeat dial, call blocking, caller ID, and distinctive ring, has increased dramatically. Services previously only available to businesses employing a private branch exchange (PBX) have become widely available as enhancements furnished by local exchange carriers (LEC) for a small fee. LECs provide these features within the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) through the use of intelligent switches that provide services to customers on the basis of requests that are transmitted as dual tone multi frequency (DTMF) tones for special numbers (e.g., *69).
Although they are commonly referred to as Custom Calling Services (CCS) or Customized Local Area Signaling Services (CLASS), the services as presently offered are generally not as useful as they could be due to the difficulty in coordinating these features across multiple lines and/or devices (e.g., home phone, mobile phone, pager, business phone, etc), and the resulting limited customization options. For example, Verizon offers a repeat dial service that will dial a busy number until the call goes through and then the original caller is rung back, or until 30 minutes have elapsed. The service can be canceled manually, but there is no way to program the service to attempt the call for any shorter or longer amount of time. Furthermore, even though the repeat dial service is not implemented on the customer's telephone unit but rather is accomplished at a switch or other network entity within the PSTN, the service always calls back to the number from which the original call was made. If a subscriber to the service knows that he or she will only be at a particular number for ten minutes, it would be convenient to have repeat dial only attempt to complete the call for the next ten minutes, or, alternatively, to ring the original caller back at a different number when the call is completed. In another example, a telephone customer may initiate call forwarding with the intention that his or her calls be forwarded to another location when the telephone is unattended and then forget to turn off call forwarding when they return. It would be useful to be able to program the call forwarding service to only be operable for a limited time or to automatically forward the call to all of the customer's phone numbers.
It would be useful to provide greater coordination between custom calling services on multiple lines and greater customization options that take advantage of the multiple lines or devices belonging to a customer.